Rancher and Partners Told to Restore Wildlife Habitat Near Camarillo : Environment: EPA says wetland was destroyed to accommodate a vegetable farm.

Rancher Craig Underwood and his business partners must restore the sizable wildlife habitat destroyed when they converted a swampy lot into a 60-acre vegetable farm just outside Camarillo, federal officials said Friday.

Biologists from the Environmental Protection Agency have determined that Underwood Ranches destroyed 23 acres of wetland when they clear-cut, drained and leveled the field in the summer of 1993.

“It was a very, very nice wetland out there,” EPA biologist Aaron Setran said, describing a field choked with cattails, rushes and willow trees.

The EPA has ordered the farmers to either restore part of their field to its natural state or to enhance an existing wetland elsewhere in the county. Biologists have not determined how many acres Underwood would need to restore.

For their part, the Underwood partners have not decided whether to challenge the EPA’s decision.

Underwood said he would review the EPA’s technical data, amassed during a six-month investigation, before determining his next step.

“We’ll have to look at all the options and try to resolve this so it’s good for them and it’s good for us,” Underwood said.

Underwood’s farm, known as Conejo Ranch, has been the subject of a series of articles in The Times over the past year. Called “60 Acres of Hope,” the series describes a year in the life of a farm.

The first article in the series attracted the attention of environmental regulators from the Army Corps of Engineers. They brought the case to the EPA, launching the federal probe.

The investigation took the partners by surprise.

When Underwood, Jim Roberts and Minos Athanassiadis bought the field for $420,000 in the spring of 1993, they knew it was overgrown and soggy. But they never considered the parcel a wetland.

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After all, the field had been dedicated to agricultural use for more than a century, first as a cattle pasture and then as a tomato and broccoli farm. The weeds and plants started sprouting only in the late 1980s, when the land lay idle.

“The evidence we have received to date indicates that the property is not a regulated wetland,” said the partners’ attorney, Curt Uritz.

Before touching the soil, the partners hired a consultant to obtain permits from local agencies, including the county flood control district.

But no one checked with the EPA.

Under the Clean Water Act, landowners must obtain federal permits before tampering with any wetlands. Suspecting a violation, EPA investigators came up with aerial photos of the field taken before farmers began working the soil. The old photos proved that a broad swath of the field had once harbored a flourishing wetland, Setran said. And soil samples confirmed that the field tended to collect pools of water.

Even the Underwoods’ own photos, snapped with pride during the first days of work on the new field, showed bulldozers churning up stands of cattails and willows, Setran said.

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Based on the photos, biologists at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service drew up a list of several dozen species that may have nested in the one-time wetland. Warblers, hawks, turtles, even coyotes and bobcats may have lived in the field, which nudges up to the foothills that form the Conejo Grade.

“It’s disappointing to lose it,” Fish and Wildlife biologist Doug Laye said. “We often deal with much smaller wetland areas--two to three acres here and there--and we consider them to be very important. To have 23 acres of riparian area--that’s certainly a large chunk.”

Recognizing that the farmers did not knowingly destroy a wetland, the EPA will not press criminal charges, Setran said.

But the alternative punishment will be costly.

Environmental consultant Pam Lindsey, who has guided several wetland restorations in Ventura County, estimated that the project could cost more than $2,000 an acre.

On-site mitigation would probably be cheaper--but would require the farmers to rip up part of their field, now planted with baby carrots.

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If they decide to enhance wetlands outside their ranch, the farmers might have to cover more territory. Regulators frequently require improvements to two acres of existing wetland for every one acre that was destroyed, Lindsey said.

Typical mitigation projects involve ripping out noxious weeds, such as giant bamboo, and planting native species in fragile wetlands. The farmers would pay for that work and for monitoring the site for five years, Lindsey said.

But she emphasized that “there are no rules--it all depends on negotiations” between the farmers and federal officials. “They sort of create the punishment to fit the crime,” said Lindsey, a biologist at Impact Sciences Inc. in Thousand Oaks.

As he prepares to begin negotiating, the EPA’s Setran said he believed his agency would be able to work out a fair deal, especially if the farmers continue to cooperate. “I can’t imagine the cost being astronomical,” he said.